Fishpond
This is a work file of unfinished things.
Most are from notebooks cut and pasted into fishpond.
I just went looking for my lucky fish in learnards pond. The water was warm, and green with algae. I found last years television under water; an old black and white Philco once pink with a thirteen inch screen. It was gray with silt and algae. I jumped: next to the television was a giant fish. It wasn't my fish who seems to be missing, but at least it was a nice big fish.
I can go home now. I hadn't come here all summer and it bothered me all summer. This is one of the ways I keep track of who I am. At least once a year I have to look for my fish.
There are new immigrants here. Eastern Europeans or Russians. The newcomers change; its still a good place to be.
6-23-91
I sat on a train track five minutes from here in Acton. Roses grew, and grapes, and raspberries. Maybe there was a garden long ago. The roses are small and delicate. Not being a rose expert I can only guess the variety is an old one as the flowers depend on subtlety for there beauty not the virtuosity of breeding for monster size or flawless shape. They almost look wild though probably once twined a trellis in the garden of a house and family long ago back to the Earth. It is good to think these flowers remember them.
9-16-91
Yom Kippur tonight - a day of fasting. I have been worrying about not eating for a week - overeating in pre compensation - maybe I am supposed to be hungry: maybe that is the point.
A few days ago I made some stew so good it was culinary ecstasy. I sat on the floor with a bowl in my lap the image of a sultan of gluttony gorging like a hungry dog. It was delicious. I will think of that tomorrow when starving. Tonight I will have a tuna fish sandwich for supper. Cramming my guts full of spaghetti is a kind of cheating.
It will be good or at least right to be hungry for a day. Lots of people are always hungry, and I have been eating like an Iowa hog this past week anyway.
I like pigs. Wallowing in cool mud seems a perfectly satisfactory way to spend a summer day: more meaningful than working in Newton anyway.
I picked it up quite naturally for a strange cat and carried it through the cellar and upstairs saying "is anyone missing a gray cat", and looking around for a response.
I carried him outside where he walked away. If I didn't think Sirius would eat him I would have taken him home.
I read about a little black cat from the city found dehydrated and alone. I wanted to take it home too.
I cut the strip of fat from along the side of a small steak along with a bit of meat and gave it to Sirius. He didn't nibble the flesh off the fat, but chewed and swallowed the entire quarter of a pound of quivering fat from one end to the other like an oily obese piece of macaroni. It was disgusting to look at: a slice of fat fully half as long as the cat, and three quarters of an inch thick disappearing like a lizard down a pit vipers gullet. It took a full five minutes to disappear.
Tonight is like all those nights at Worcester Jr. college when I sat on the orange chair and looked at the fruit fly on the wall. It was an institutional green wall and the fly would find the spot of applesauce somehow spilled in a vertical direction and fill its very small fly stomach. The fly had red eyes. On the table was a favorite glass bottle once filled with orange juice, but ever since filled with cold water.
Numb: are you numb yet.
Not quite.
Better give you another shot.
Can you feel anything.
Ahgg.
I'll give you some more.
Can you still feel it.
A little.
A little pain is good for you.
Another tooth ground to a stump. A little silver temporary crown awaiting future gold. The dentist didn't have a temporary crown big enough for my sharks fangs so he improvised: don't floss, be careful eating, it will be sensitive.
My future gold tooth is to be sculpted by the lost wax method; like the pre Inca treasure in the gold museum in Bogota.
It is raining out; a miserable November rain in December. A little colder and it would be snowing little hexagons. Some industrial machine is yowling a sixty cycle hum in this parking lot beneath the dentists window.
I have to drive away: there is a sixty cycle hum in my head.
12-27-91
I cooked boneless breast of chicken; gave some to Sirius and put the rest in the refrigerator. Later putting in a new gallon of spring water was apparently a mistake. The dish with the chicken fell out and broke.
It hurt for two days. I looked at the bottom of my right big toe and cringed. There was a lump of something painful and sharp. A squeeze produced only blood and a throb of deeper pain; fingers refused to scrape it out. My kingdom for a needle or a pair of tweezers; and do psychologists call this an approach avoidance conflict? Dread filled the air. I could not scrape it out with my fingers though I tried with diminishing hope. Hobble about: cant find a needle, Rambo was a wimp. A Philippine butterfly knife among my collection of deadly objects presented a cold stainless obsessively sharp blade with all to obvious utility. I jammed the point into the now festering toe under the glass and pried it out like a trophy glistening in blood. Maybe I will take out my appendix next. Cant believe I did it. Disgusting but it had to be done.
It was a bit of china from the dish I broke a week ago. The dish needed a bit of revenge for my dropping it.
A long time ago I took a cardboard tube home. It is a cylinder about six inches high I used to prop open the lid of the Kodak Royalprint machine at Newtonville camera. It had eyes and a face on it painted a long time before and it was the second cylinder used for this purpose. The first was thrown out when I went on vacation by someone who "cleaned"' the darkroom. It must have been another vacation when I decided to take the second one home so it wouldn't be missing when I return. It lives on a shelf at home now - I hoped it might become a souvenir of my time here.
But I am still a prisoner and the third cylinder stands on the Royalprint machine: only it does not have a face.
A tooth broke yesterday; a shard of enamel and silver. The last gold crown cost 710 dollars. I hope this tooth can be rescued with less dollars being drained.
Somehow I just remembered exactly-I was sitting in the Austin cafe reading a Herald left from the last customer, and covered in hamburger grease when I noticed an ad for a cleaning service. The ad had a picture of a near microscopic and harmless dust mite magnified to godzilla proportions meant to terrorize the reader into hiring the cleaning service. I liked the picture. It reminded me of the flour beetles that lived in the cabinet above the sink at 94 Central street. The cabinet was a salmon colored badly painted plywood thing. I liked it and the beetles which I thought of as pets who had as much right to live there as anyone else. I just didn't eat the flour they lived in and they were perfectly happy living where they were.
I wanted to write something about Ricky. Carol who works at Newtonville camera proudly showed off pictures of the two cats she owns ; soon to be displayed in a calendar. She always talks about the two cats. One time I went to a Store pizza party and found a fat multicolored scared cat in her house. "who is that", I asked: Ricky she said or maybe "just Ricky". Anyway I could detect his leper status right away.
She had him for a year and never mentioned he existed; while constantly talking about how cute her "two", cats were. She called me at night to see if I would take him (she knew I liked him ) in the morning as she was moving and he "ruins the window sills".
If Sylvester was not here I might take him. He is in a vets. office in a cage. Carol said "I had to break the wall down to get him: he freaked out when I moved".
I just wanted to hold him and tell him he was a nice cat. He has feelings-I feel really sad about him.
Carol got him from a police lady who rescued him from an abandoned house - now she dumps him at the vet."to find a decent home for him". Why didn't she want to keep him?
The answering machine said to go to building 5 unit 8 to pick up my U.P.S. package. It was the Mirro aluminum bakeware.
I love things to come in the mail - it always seems like a present. These are six aluminum baking containers designed for toaster ovens. An ordering form came in my Christmas present toaster oven, and I sent away, "four to six weeks for delivery".
I always like little presents like this as much as big ones. There is no over inflated expectation, no buyers remorse: just a nice surprise in the mail; only 8.95 plus shipping and handling.
they are perfect; now I want to bake something.
The frogs will be back soon: its almost warm out. I saw a small tree with three starlings one of which was so close I could hear it hop. These are pretty birds with iridescent subtle blacks and grays. They are the "weeds", of birds. Bird watchers peering through binoculars with dog eared life lists in hand would not notice a starling if it stood on there heads and pecked at there eyes. Gardeners call them "pests", Hunters "trash", and ecologists invading parasites.
All of the above reasons stand starlings in good stead with me. I have always liked them: ever since rescuing one with a broken wing and hearing "its only a starling", spoken in the tone of voice a Brahmin reserves for an untouchable. All I saw was a sad frightened bird; rather good looking with shiny almost black feathers bright eyes and a yellow beak.
Today I saw three of them enjoying the almost Spring. One was close enough to hear hopping, close enough to look happy.
She had very blond hair: a cowboy shirt with fringes, and white snakeskin boots.
I was walking the ugly corridors of a red brick building designed for utility while searching for the cable TV. office to pay an overdue bill. The girl could not find it either and we spoke for less than a minute. She had a well healed scar on her face and one of her eyes looked a bit hurt. Perhaps she was in a car accident a long time ago. She favored the right side when talking (the scar was on the left ) as if sharing a residual self consciousness and wariness from a long time ago.
I wish I knew her well enough to tell her she was really pretty despite an old scar. There was something nice about that girl. She was late paying her bill too - perhaps that is all we have in common; perhaps not.
I heard a horrible shriek. It was Sylvester, and the shriek corresponded with his tail being under my foot. I didn't see him. It was like closing the refrigerator door on his head. All I could do is say I am sorry to him and pat his head while he paced in pained circles. The poor kitty has president Fords skill at searching out accidents. Both cats are asleep now. Wonderful creatures: even if pests sometime - they are good company and good friends.
Who was the Indian? "Que hora es"? Dos Y media. I was on a crumbling sidewalk above a series of old cement steps half cracked and fallen beside piles of reeking garbage and the Amazon. There were broken multicolored houseboats; some old barges, and some thatched roofed cabins on log rafts. The Indian woman paddled by in a dugout with a home made paddle. Two worlds: Indians in dugouts: maybe they had plastic pails and aluminum pots, but they lived in the jungle and the blow guns and curare still comforted, and roasted grubs tasted like home. The other world was California style island city: steamy tin roofs, mosaic tiles and chicken. The menu said Pollo, but chicken what. Chicken burgers, chicken fried, fricasseed, roasted or boiled. What I got was a bowl of cream of wheat floating in green liquid with a boiled breast; an island like Iquitos floating in unknown.
It still exists: Wild miles of secret dunes; rocks unseen, beetles crawling on the sand, and a horizon as far as you can see. The Red desert drops into a quiet crater twelve miles down Bitter Creek road now as yesterday miles from towns and the "law", if you can call the whorehouses of Rawlins law, or the streets of Rock Springs wholesome and clean. The Union Pacific thuds and growls almost as nicely with it's yellow diesels as with the stink of coal and steam.
I found the overgrown dirt road again; the one that leads to the secret woods behind the bookstore. It was alligator hot Georgia swamp weather; the kind of heat that feels like a disease.
The woods made a crunching sound of deer hooves or fox feet. I froze seeing nothing: hearing awful swamp noises; sensing terror. A frog bounded onto the road; boing, boing, boing, in unnatural haste followed by a snake almost flying after. Snakes hunt by stealth sneaking quietly within striking distance for a quick kill. This particular snake apparently never read Ditmars Reptiles of the World, and was happily playing the role of cold blooded wolf by running down his prey. The frog made it across the road and hopped down an embankment in great haste to the edge of a puddle and safety from any serpent who ever read Petersons field guide to North American reptiles, and understood that snakes can only travel a short distance at the speed of a walking human before tiring. This was a snake on steroids, and it flew like a peregrine falcon down the embankment; mouth open landing on the frogs leg with a soft fleshy crunch. The poor frog screamed horribly while blowing bubbles out of its terrified mouth. It made a squealing sound unlike any frog noise I had ever heard before. Snakes can't bite off chunks they have to swallow prey whole. To do so it would have to relax its bite for a split second in order to maneuver the frogs head into its serpents mouth. This was my chance; this second fragment of frog time. I leaped down the hill as the snake relaxed his grip and frightened it away. A quarter of a second later the frog was buried in the deepest mud in the puddle. At least I deserve a frog thank you.
Three of the boats were white heavy things and hard to row. It did not matter as I lacked the requisite swimming certificate to be allowed to go rowing anyway. One of the boats was blue very small and always half submerged in pond.
Ten years later as a councilor at the same camp I found that boat abandoned in the woods peeling and quiet. Whenever I had to escape the loneliness around me I found that old boat next to a pine tree and felt the same old friend of a decade before. Camp is likely a tennis court long ago now: the boat gone to all but me.
Amy Speiler came to me in a dream. She was wearing a bright green sweater, and a big smile. I wanted to show her my cats, and my pictures, and eat a big feast at the Wayside Inn: and show her where I came from, and ask where she had been. Since Wyoming and orange roads and desert light and laughing howling things in the distance.
She was suicidal: always talked about how. She had a pill collection, and a Swedish army rifle, and she loved to sharpen knives on a black oilstone rubbed concave through years of grating blades.
Maybe she has written about me in a notebook lost in a desk drawer in Idaho where she married a Mormon mechanic.
Maybe she only exists now in this notebook in a dream in a quiet place with peeling blue boats.
I drove past the climbing rocks, past Cheyenne. The last thing I remember was eating Amy Speilers macadamia nut muffins. They were split in half and filled with guava jelly.
It was an hour ago, or twenty years: it was the last time I saw Amy Speiler or Wyoming.
Amy Speiler came to me in a dream. She was wearing a bright green sweater, and a big smile. I wanted to show her my cats, and my pictures, and eat a big feast at the Wayside Inn: and show her where I came from, and ask where she had been, Since Wyoming and orange roads and desert light and laughing howling things in the distance.
Gibson's discount store was gone; Laramie had too many new stores. I looked at Downy hall where I lived ,and the old house on second St., and Amy's old dormitory. Then I found the building where I once had a key and where I liked the quiet after ten at night; a good place to write. My old room was locked; the heavy oak door and green glass as I left an hour ago ,or twenty years. I wanted to see the tarnished brass switch plate iridescent green and the aluminum painted steam radiators. The dream was always the same: I was in Laramie and couldn't find Gibsons; maybe because it was not there anymore.
The second part of the dream was always the Red desert. In the dream it was East of Laramie and a short ride. In the dream it always felt like the wrong place. It was a days ride to Bitter creek road, across the Medicine Bow mountains and I-80, till the landscape gradually changed from high plains to desert. The real Red desert has not changed much in 20 years. Almost not at all. I drove till 25 miles from I-80, the nearest paved road. Twelve mile well once a pipe drilled down into an artesian with a manmade trough dug for cows and sheep has gone back to nature. It looks better now as a Desert seep surrounded by an odd green. The playa has moved back from the road a hundred feet and seems more desiccated than before. A golden eagle sat on a sagebrush, and it was hot and lip cracking dry. It was most of all; still real. Next time I will go deeper and find the wild horses again.
I found some of the oldest me in the Wellesly college greenhouse. Alone ( without human companionship ) but not " alone ". The tiniest specks of things this big ( * ) glowed green through the cracks in the flagstones and drops of water looked at me and sparkled. I liked the two swampy rooms: one with papyrus reeds and waterfalls; and another filled with soggy liverworts and moss and ferns. I had an image of leaves after a thunderstorm when the sky is still dark gray, but the Sun can creep in on one side and light up the green.
The
Nicenesses
I found a broken china cup leaking cool water.
I held the pieces in my hands: kept them off the floor; hoped the water might stay pure.
I glued all the pieces together section by section because I was the nicenesses. Because I felt whole and important being needed, and then out of love.
The cup stopped leaking: the glue marks not quite hidden in a harsh light, the cracks shadows on an X-ray plate.
With a sad love I put the healing cup on my cupboard shelf
Yesterday I needed a drink of water. I looked for my cup; the special one I helped hold together.
I looked and looked
and found instead a drying ring of water.
Rt. 126 industrial park in Ashland. I used to shoot here; guns as well as cameras. Once Pam brought a great frozen fish here belonging to her former husband. We put the cod with ice glazed eyes on a dirt pile and shot about 100 bullets into it and left the remains to rot. Actually I suggested we go shooting and she hand picked the target.
I came here before meeting her and now a long time after she is gone. The road beyond the dirt piles is not too recognizable as a road anymore as the dirt piles stopped even Jeeps for about four years; and someone cleaned all the shards of glass and twisted metal that sufficed as targets for me and whoever else secreted here for the informal target shooting known as plinking.
Now there is a new building next to the dirt piles and a collection of steam shovels and broken bulldozers on the other side.
The leaves rattle in the wind: an old rusty cable loops out of the
dirt; perhaps a worm looking for the bones of a certain fish
The Hum
I think of the sadness in the snow. When Pam was drawing with oils beside her; the pool on Nobscot mountain.
The greatest of oak trees reflected in her eyes, and I had everything: along with an empty loneliness.
I don't know why; I helped to push away everything that meant anything at all.
The snow came in soggy oversized flakes.
The light was gone from the sky.
And from me. And I don't know why.
It doesn't help to cry anymore, but I still cry.
And sometimes I walk to the same pool, and wonder how empty something full of water can be.
I just visited an old green stool I like at the art school. It's on the fourth floor. I took it's picture last week. It is torn, about forty years old and taped together. That stool is probably more symbolic of this school than anything else I have seen here. At least it works: it doesn't disappoint like this class. I wish I was home instead of here.
The green truck is like the old chair. It is in the shell station getting fixed up: new windows to replace the one shot out by the kid next door, and the one pried open and cracked by a thief. It also needs an exhaust system.
3-22-86
Couldn't sleep thinking about the old wind up alarm clock grating me into consciousness at 3:20 am.
Cats confused at the lights. Sirius slept: the other three stumbled into the kitchen groveling for food.
Cold ride in a blur to Bose mountain and a wait for the comet that started in 1956. My mother got me a telescope on September eleven 1956 to see Mars on it's close approach. I already knew at ten and a half years old that Haley's would arrive in 1986. I carefully computed my own age and knew time never ends. How would I feel in 1986? Would things be the same? Would I be lucky enough to be alive? did that even matter? Would water still sparkle in the sun?
Nothing changed. Water still sparkles in the sun; the early mornings are still cold and crisp.
May flies who live one day as flying creatures are ephemerata, so are we.
Newtonville sitting in darkroom. I was thinking of lunch; so sick of tuna fish that I didn't make lunch. Emergency lunch is a can of ravioli hiding in a bag with a white can opener, a fork, and a white bowl. A long time ago I got two matching white bowls: one for water and one for food which was Calo for the cats or rather for Oscar who was the original. Now if I dared use such small containers for the sustenance of my lions; or even more vulgar if I dared put Calo in one, they would eat me.
They now eat and drink out of heavy overly large bowls suitable for drooling carnivores. They actually broke one by rolling a can of tuna off the kitchen table splitting it in half. I tried to glue it but gave up, and gave them a bigger one I once bought as a Christmas present but liked too much to give away.
Tired drive to Newtonville. I stood in line for two jelly donuts across the street then walked to the back door. On the ground was a squashed brown thing with plastic dots. It looked like a dead animal; reptilian perhaps or a mammal run over for months. It had a vague familiarity which upon close examination proved to be my old glove. Obviously it fell from a pocket on a previous donut run a good six weeks ago and had since been rained on, snowed on, frozen to the ground and run over 602 times. It also smells like diesel oil, but now fitted to my left hand works just fine and the wrinkles are working themselves into fingers and not flats.
I just drove to the old Newtonville to my old parking space. There was a wonderful little tree that no one ever saw but me: the one cleaned out with all the weeds. The building was the weed if anything was. The tree was all of comfort all the time I lived in the cellar here. I opened the back door and looked at the little tree and liked it and we both smiled in the Sun.
On Edmunds road on a perfect October night: eyes glowed in my headlights. Slow eyes; eyes that barely moved. An opossum scuttled over the road a few feet randomly left then right. It was destined to be run over. I stopped and it didn't move. Maybe the headlights froze it. I chased it into the woods where it crashed through the leaves like a small bear. Opossums are supposed to be among the stupidest creatures, but I liked it just the same. They look like over sized rats: wonderfully ugly things with seeming hundreds of pointed teeth in a long snout, a fat ungainly body wearing indifferent gray fur and a long prehensile rodent tail. I know they are marsupials but the tail looks as though it could find a home on any oversized rodent. I liked it.
Nov.5,1985
Sitting in my truck in typical November rain; gray and cold, four days worth.
I just looked at the table in my apartment and found a post card from Paris from Pam from her honeymoon, and from 1981. I put it in the orange book so it lives where it belongs and not on my table.
The nice bridge at Pellham island road has been replaced with a modern wide safe one with hand rails. The old one was narrow, kinked, and had boards missing. It was much better.
The other person I met was a four year old kid; quiet, sitting very alone. I put a fish oven mitt on my hand and told him " I am a fish and I am going to eat you ". Then I said this fish eats stomachs, and " bit ",his stomach in a tickle. He laughed and it was the beginning of a long game of fish eating fish. He started a story of a big fish, but his eyes had tears in them and I didn't interrupt. He said " the big fish is dying ", and looked at me with the saddest eyes. I said " sometimes sad things happen ". He curled up on the ground like a dead fish; all quiet to the outside world. " It's a miracle", he said like Pat Robertson and got up. " The dead fish is all better now ". I didn't push him; he obviously had a very great loss and was trying to both understand it and make it better.
How can there ever be a hum that way or any special words or any special looks or anything at all that defines two in a way of one.
Nose swelling under ice filled sock; almost broken. Reeling from the shock and pain.
I was lying on the floor watching television. Sirius was lying next to me resting his head on my left arm. My feet were resting on a little table. I was relaxed and quite comfortable; so was the cat.
Crash: a horrible noise; just a nudge really from an errant toe and a dish fell on the floor followed by a clanging spoon. The Stump on the chair beside me saw the whole business and didn't even blink. Sirius though was almost asleep and the crash scared the crap out of him, and he leapt to his clawed feet scrambling across my face like a climber on an ice field with crampons. My face is unfortunately used to claws, but Sirius in his haste to escape the noise bumped into a rather large lamp with a heavy cast iron base, goose neck top and iron pipe upright. It was the iron pipe which fell in a graceful arc descending perfectly across the bridge of my proboscis. Sirius goes into the microwave.
The Stump
I heard horrible cat crying. Pulsar under the bed said nothing. I listened harder. The Stump almost vermiform had squeezed himself behind a knapsack and howled with the same voice used the first time he heard a vacuum cleaner.
I patted him and understood it was the rain and lightning and most of all the thunder. What to me was refreshing after a day of soggy slime heat was to him terrifying beyond panic.
He moved to a clear part of the rug and crouched lower than even a cat can get. He melted into the carpet fibers, only orange eyes oversized ears and a howl.
In the morning he knocked the alarm clock on the floor; impatient with waiting, and walked on my head for breakfast. He was himself again: the poor Stump.
10-31-84
Halloween; this morning a clock, and a sign fell off a wall at Lechmere and smashed on the floor. No one was there; it was a little creepy. The clock was brass with etched glass and very old fashioned looking, but with a quartz movement.
Now I am thinking of voting for Mondale. Reagans stand or non stand on environmental problems, and his destruction of the conservation effort of fifty years, and his stand on religion are pushing me in that direction. But Mondale just doesn't inspire. Indira Ghandi was murdered by one of her palace guard today. I am very glad to be living in the USA. where either candidate who wins won't throw the country into turmoil. Sikhs and Hindus are killing each other in the streets; I hope there country holds together.
I am looking at an orange tape measure curled up on the floor like a snail. The tape measure or the average tape worm cares less who becomes president or about Indira Ghandi, and I care more about the tape measure than either one.
In front of me is an old fashioned push cart from a food store; all chrome, and of an old fashioned design that lives despite changes. First were the tall shallow innovative carts designed so the bags were all reachable, and so you could open the front and dump all the groceries on the conveyer at the cash register. It was a good idea, but kids sitting in them managed to unbalance the whole thing and topple it over while ensconced therein. Next were the bright orange plastic ones. They had a low center of gravity like the chrome wire ones, were bright and cheery, but also disappeared because the wind sailed them across the parking lots into oblivion. Now the original is back, and it works just fine.
I just remembered the fish head I liked from the old house when I was nine years old, or maybe seven or eight. My grandmother chopped the head off a giant haddock, and I felt the same way about that fish head as about that ugly camera bag. Only the fish head looked at me with sad eyes. It didn't want to be thrown out in the garbage so I wrapped it in paper and buried it in the yard. My grandmother upon its discovery ( it wasn't deep, and like things dead began to smell ) threw it away in the garbage. I found a vacant hole in the ground, and was sad, and angry, and powerless.
Lechmere parking lot again. A blue McDonalds Styrofoam box is being rained on and opening and closing like a joke set of teeth from an old movie. It is aqua blue, and must have contained a fish sandwich. " White filet of fish", or whatever turned up in the net that morning good enough for an Iowa farmer who thinks " Bumble Bee " is a species of fish. The box is OK. on its own. It looks like a clam now. If there were waves here I would put it on the beach.
Writing about the clam made me late for work. The clam is more valuable.
I just want something that doesn't leave me; something that stays the same.
I just thought of the little tree struggling to stay alive between the white wall, and the driveway behind the old Newtonville. I used to open the back door out of my dim hot fume filled room, and the sun would hurt my eyes. That little tree was almost glowing green. I looked at it for about three or four years from a stick to a tree with a chance. One hot day I opened the door, and the tree was gone.
I kept looking for it as though it might come back. Someone " cleaned " the driveway, and ripped out one more useless weed.
8-17-85
Sitting outside of Prime, and I just saw a large gray rat walking out onto the street.
I stopped and gave it some of my tuna fish sandwich crust. It lives in the woods between Prime computer, and the Ford building. It was looking at the Hilton but decided the woods were really home.
There is a dandelion in the rain next to an outhouse. I wonder if it makes any difference to a flower where it is.
4-13-87
Rt.126 industrial park Ashland;
One of my places; of spring flowers and floods.
The sound of frogs, and a certain fish.
This seems a good place to end this book.
Today is Passover. It's cold rainy, and snow mixed with the rain covers the lichens and new flowers.
It's a good day to be led out of Egypt.
7-28-87
Is Pfoxer behind me?
The Atlantic is out and on page 42 is the poem by Wipe 2 about me.
About mountains and bears
About pictures lost in yellow boxes,
and about fisheye lenses seeing too much and going round, and round in circles.
Strange happy sadness. Someone might care who I am among all those readers: someone knows I am all alone.
I wish the Hum would come home: she never will; I wish Pfoxer was behind me, she is fat and citified.
I wish sand would sting my eyes again, and the Sun wash over the sadness.
No one cares about my road, or about the purple river flowers in August, or about my life running out inside empty walls.
It seems that the quiet spaces, and the warm shadows in the desert sun remain silent in the wind.
The little things look at me most: staying home alone and seeing the Stump jam himself into a space where even a cat couldn't turn, and backing up so undignified for so perfect a being, or watching a single leaf in the water float away in its lone redness.
My life in draining away unnoticed. I hate " photojournalism " , it's mostly shallow stuff. I love beautiful things both quiet and alive, and what can only be the terrible beauty, the beauty with the Fear of God, that comes alone in the wilderness.
The Kodak Royalprint hums its boring song. And my quietness mixes with rage. I am not a businessman, I am not a " salesman ", I am not an egregious self promoter.
I don't know what to do.
I thought of Oscar while in a flu induced dream, and of how much she looks like the little china cat I had in Dorchester when I was ten years old
A small tree about two and a half feet high: I am at Pellham island road and so is the little tree, backlit green, and glowing. It's a perfect fall day cool, and clear; near sunset light. This place needs the footprints of wolves rustling in the leaves. I should be running around with a camera, but don't want to. It's enough to be lucky enough to see the trees.
I love all the seasons. New England is still the best place in the world.
All day I did nothing but lie around till I got a headache: accomplishing nothing but getting closer to death; watching the clock roll out its numbers.
Sitting here in the woods feeling the cool chill on my fingers, and listening to the birds; that's accomplishing something.
My back is against the rough bark of the larger version of the baby tree, only time marks the trees different, both are the same.
Now only the tops of the biggest trees glow: the day was worth something; something more then picking up my fixed vacuum cleaner or buying another can of cat food or devouring another egg.
Two pair bonded ducks just skimmed the trees heading North. A short time ago ducks and geese flew South. Now they seem to hang around till hard frost ices over all the ponds, and even then some linger.
A few minutes ago I was hungry almost starved, ready to eat road killed skunks if necessary, now the hunger is of little importance, the bird song fills my soul; my stomach can always wait awhile.
Someday I would like to live with woods like this in the back yard. I would love to look in my cats eyes and see the awe.
Oddly warm November night; tomorrow maybe seventy degrees.
I went camping a few years ago in November during the same odd warmth. The trees were bare. It should have been near Winter on Cannon mountain: but it wasn't it was Spring before the leaves opened up; as strange a forest as when gypsy moths turn Summer back into Spring.
On the way down the mountain was a beautiful girl with long red hair, and a roundish face. She smiled at me almost asking me to speak; but neither said anything that mattered, and we walked away.
I ached to know her name.
Maybe this was better.
That way she is perfect.
Sweet, and kind, and gentle.
And always will be.
Blue flippers: I once sneaked into a pond in Stow during an assignment with the Marlboro Enterprise.
Many times they searched for my lucky fish. They were the new flippers the ones bought after the Puerto Rico robbery. Now they are rotten, and torn, and I threw them in a green dumpster; emptied another box.
The splinter I got from an old ladder while dragging old things past: festered and I dug it out with a utility knife; a needle would no longer do.
I went swamping; having missed the swamp on Thanksgiving.
It's really a small place the swamp, but its extreme difficulty of exploration turns its isolation into an Amazon free of tourists.
My favorite tree knocked over by hurricane Carol in 1954 is still happily alive leaning against a maple. It used to be " easy " to find, now I can reach it only because I know exactly where it is as it's not visible till almost touched; like a White mountain hut in a cloud.
Small shrubbery trees about two inches thick, and ten feet high are like grass needing to be mowed. Moving through them is almost impossible.
Sitting in the truck next to the swamp being inspected by two birds; gray on top, white on the bottom, and the size of fat sparrows. They hop on the ground, and on branches at least as well as they can fly.
It's my birthday today. I called Newtonville this morning, and told them I was sick. Perhaps my conscience should throb because of society being short changed a day of my valuable labor, but it doesn't.
Conscience dictates seeing my old friend the tipped over pine tree;
not forgotten lord of the swamp.
1-9-88
The Stump died; like a lump of garbage. Twenty minutes ago he was alive sitting on my lap; yowling in the kitchen, being a pest.
I heard a smashing sound in the kitchen like a bag of groceries dropped, and I looked, and saw the poor Stump lying beside the wastebasket screaming. I squeezed his stomach thinking he may have choked then whacked him on the chest.
I took him to the emergency vet, but he was already dead. Much too fast; I don't feel it yet or believe it.
How can I open the door tomorrow, and not have him there to greet me? How can his life just end? He was still warm at the vets. A knowing flea crawled off his back hungry.
He enriched my life; I hope I enriched his. This past week he would lie on my stomach: he needed comfort, he probably didn't feel good, he yowled a few times in the kitchen.
Lately he would lie next to Pulsar, and they would lick each other, and sleep in a pile of comfort.
The other cats look awful. They are staring around.
Sirius was always The Stumps rival. I don't feel anything now; just blank. How could he die so fast? Maybe I should burn this place down because it is empty.
I knew him when he was small enough to put in my pocket. He was the ugliest kitten I ever saw, and he turned into the most wonderful cat.
He was part of my life with the Hum too; and a lot more, eleven years being my friend, greeting me at the door. I will be looking for him in the corners, and on the sofa, and chairs for a long time. Mostly; behind my head on the rolled up futon when watching TV., Ill turn around and he won't be there.
The Stump; he helped hold me together.
1-10-88
I miss him; I woke up at 5:00 AM.the time he always woke me up by poking me in the eye with his claws. I always liked to grab him by the hind foot, it was a game: he stood for it only so much then tried to nail me with a front paw, but I would release him ( usually ) in time only to repeat the game in a few seconds.
His picture is here in the lab in Newtonville: looking at me from the wall; he sits in the window at 94 Central St. in the Sun.
Now I feel awful. It didn't seem like he was really dead till today.
1-12-88
Mrout brain, I haven't used that word in awhile.
1-14-88
I didn't even write about the broken pipe, and flood when I got home: or being rear ended by a police car on route two because it seemed minor.
Now what: do I file the Stump in a jumbled memory pile like the old stuff in boxes in Randy's barn?
Absolute random chance; yesterday a Pam Alexander letter from 1977 fell out of a removed box, and landed on the green rug remnant floor in the Toyota pickup bed. It was about Pfoxer ( then new ), and she mentioned my cat Oscar. Now I am not sure when the kittens were born; 1976 or 1977.
Lots of things happened during the Stumps life: pocket cats, Mahusic Notch, mrout brains.
I took such good care of my first Nikon, and it was stolen at knife point in a jungle in Puerto Rico. I cared for my second one as well, and it was stolen.
Right now I feel that way about cats in general as though so much feeling is just empty. I feel like putting the remaining three in plastic bags, and throwing them in the garbage. They are just going to die on me too, maybe I should just give them all away.
Now they are all purring. They make me change my mind. I love them all, mrout brains. It's natural to be angry when someone dies, and the Stump is a someone not an old shoe.
It's quiet, and empty, and no one yells at me because he is hungry. I saved a fortune this week in cat food - the three live cats ate less than the Stump did alone. No wonder he always yowled for food, and poked me in the eyes at five AM. or ripped my lip with his claws; he was always hungry, he was a roving stomach.
I particularly liked to look at him on the chair with Pulsar with a sleepy glow about him. He was a wonderful thing alive.
I want him to come home.
I wish he knew how to knock
on my door.
I just saw the Stump. I looked under the table, and he was sitting there. It was really Oscar, but for a second I saw the Stump.
I feel happy today for a change, and did yesterday also. The Sun was warm; the day finally warm enough.
I just thought of the glint in polished granite, and the wonder of rocks, and received great pleasure from it.
It hit me that most of the time I am sad. Happiness hits like a flash of brilliance; it would be better to reverse this order.
When I was three, and poured a glass of water out a third floor window the shock of discovering that water doesn't fall as a solid lump, but splits, and splits again into a world of sparkles and glimmer made me as happy as I had ever been. Since then clear blue sky, and bright days, and glimmering things have been too rare, but always welcome.
I keep old things around to refresh my memory of those lightning strikes that lit up a few dark corners; and to keep the bane of dullness away, and the rain soaked cold ill on its feet. Throwing all those old things out: the red truck, boxes of feeling wrought in old things, hurt, it hurt greatly.
Finally the Sun comes out at least once in a while.
I always liked that pen; the broken one lying on the moss in Sudbury road. It finds me like my lucky fish; something that lives in a favorite place.
This red pen was lying in the sidewalk looking at me. Ball-point pens are a lot better then the old fountain pens. Fountain pens were symbols of " growing up " they were expensive gold nibbed tortoise shelled jeweled medallions of office power. They always looked like cobras to me dripping venom. Ball-points are a lot better.
A few days ago I went for lunch, and saw some flowers. They were purple red roses somewhat bedraggled, but glowingly Spring time bright. Three of them formed a triangle in three dimensions. The World faded beside them; maybe they were the World, or the keys to a better one. I was glad my camera was someplace else; it would have only been in the way.
I just saw a " buy of the week " in the New York Times; it was a zucchini with picture of same. It reminded me of the " garden " I had in the coop patch next to the prison in Framingham.
I remember all of the things I grew there even if I am the worlds worse gardener. My specialty was Colorado potato beetles, and assorted weeds. But I loved the bright red orange flowers, the three inch diameter watermelon, and the few potatoes, and squashes big enough to eat.
Birds are often background noise; they just are. Today I saw a starling hopping around on the ground, and felt awe at its little life. It wasn't background or foreground - it was the same ground; the way it ought to be always.
I wanted to hold it: feel its warm feathers; look closer into its eye.
It tested its fine tuned beak in the gravel of the parking lot edge finding seeds, crumbs, ants.
I liked it.
10-22-92
Very bad mood. Walked upstairs after six when the store closed and a nice lady who I like wanted to buy a flash and Dave said I'll take care of it it's after six. He thought I wouldn't stay after six and he is right. But I like that lady. I feel disgust today. Tired of pretending ( a survival strategy ) that working in this camera store is where I would like to be forever. Feel trapped; it seems years go by and I am still reading magazines to stay sane while listening to the Kodak Royalprint machine and its years long sixty cycle hum. Angry is how I feel; really smash something angry, tired of being bored all the time. I am about to exit this notebook to finish another cover letter to be filed along with my resume in some ones wastebasket.
11-3-93
I am out of money again and very agitated. It is very hard and makes me worry. I keep hearing how " lucky ", I am to have a job: well I don't feel lucky I feel trapped in an endless cycle of being at a dead end.
1-14-93
I am still not used to writing directly into the computer. I saved a pear for a week; it was so good to eat I wanted to write, and decided to try to write directly, bypassing paper.
I liked pears when they were strained pears baby food. They are still better then apples: delicious juicy, I like to cut the skin off and eat that way as a barbarian with juice running down my arms. There is something wonderfully primitive about eating an actual fruit from a tree. It is more satisfying then a cake or a piece of bread.
I was walking around the isles in the super market when I saw a fat lady. She reminded me of the second Pam: I was startled, and stared for a closer look. I have not seen her in such a long time; I hope she hasn't become old and fat. I have to remember her the way she was. Sarah will become or not become; the hum is already. Even if she is gone.
Sherry called up very sad. Her little bird Gwendeline was lying on the cage floor. Sherry took her to a nice vet who took the bird home, and said She would force feed her. Sherry said how she remembered when a bunch of cruel boys were dragging a cat they had tortured by the tail; they had gouged its eyes out with a stick. We both saw this when we were very little. I have always hated that kind of cruelty. It seems important that both Sherry, and I strongly remember this meanness.
I went into the other room, and called Sirius over to me and just hugged him. He is looking very old lately especially when comparing him to Sylvester. His eyes are watery like an old mans, and his fur is unkempt. He can still beat Sylvester to a pulp though whenever he wants to.
It has been a few hours since writing about the bird. Sherry was so sad. Why do little birds have to die? Why did Pams cat eat those two baby birds?
I heard a story on the radio about the biggest bacteria in the World. It is as thick as a Human hair, and the shape of a hot dog. It is big enough to see without a microscope, and a wonderful puzzle. Apparently the " simple " inner structure of bacteria disallow a creature of such bacterial immensity, a million times larger than the design parameters. It is good to know such a creature exists. Humans always think they understand even the most complex of wonders. I hearby name this beast the ego crusher.
A great mystery has been solved. When I get Spring water I peel off a plastic strip around the top, and toss it to a waiting Sylvester. He paces in expectation, and excitement. For awhile he grabs and tosses the plastic ring till apparently he gets bored with the game, and goes in the other room to bite Sirius or to take a nap. The mystery is that he must have twenty rings to play with, but I have a difficult time finding any of them; where do they go. I was typing on the computer and Sylvester tried to sit on my lap as usual. I threw him off politely at first; but when he sat on the box of paper behind the printer for the seven thousandth time I squirt him with my combination plant sprayer cat remover. He was soon clawing at something under the refrigerator only he could see, and soon clawed out a blue plastic ring. He soon pulled out another plastic ring, and another one, and soon had enough rings to satisfy Tolkien or Wagner. This is his secret ring cache; his toy box.
Now I wonder where the orange rings are, as all the refrigerator rings are blue.
Work was everything ordinary; I drove home too tired, past the fog roiling over the ice. I drove past thinking I was too tired, too empty, too bored. The ice reminded me of more important things then being too tired, and I turned around.
I took pictures: tripod pictures, pictures where I had to think as well as feel, of fog in April, of the last ice of winter hanging on. There was a tree bent, and dead: a tree I see every day, and like every day. The tree appeared, and disappeared, appeared, and disappeared. The fog, and the ice reminded me of Winter, and Spring. It reminded me of what mattered. When I came home I looked in the mailbox: the letter from the collection agency was perfectly clear; pay up or we cut off your balls. I didn't care.
Sirius curled up next to me, and we watched a movie. At least I watched a movie, maybe he just saw a flickering noisy light. He was his old happy self. He is the last of the original Mrout brains. I was very happy to see Sylvester walk over and lick Sirius's head. This was the first time I have ever watched him walk over to Sirius, and not bite him. Sirius looked sleepy and comfortable; Sylvester climbed onto the sofa, and took the kind of nap only cats can.
6-3-93
Somehow I keep thinking of the shortcut to the Morton Theater. I was walking there thinking that someday people would think I was old to be born in 1945. I was eight or nine, and upset that candy bars were six cent instead of five. Something had changed that seemed untrustworthy and sneaky.
I was glad I was born in an important year. Some people count time from the year the war ended. I knew that when I was walking to the Morton to see two movies for a quarter.
Why do we have to destroy something perfect in order to eat? I had a flawless perfect hazelnut: I didn't want to break it, but did in order to eat it and saw it smash horribly. I wanted to keep it.
10-25-88
I was nervous; maybe the tree wouldn't be there.
On a trail at Wellfleet bay Audubon sanctuary is a pine tree; the last white pine tree half alive at the end of a salt swamp. I always visit this tree surviving on the edge: it's small stunted, and admirable, it lives where other pine trees are afraid to live.
I found a dead skeleton of a tree at the end of the trail so frail a goat could push it over. I felt awful, and went back to the Audubon headquarters on the off chance that it wasn't my tree as the plants have numbered plaques and a guide book with a story to tell about each kind. This was how I learned of the pine tree, and have been coming back to find it for twenty years.
It was wonderful the guidebook description didn't match the dead tree I found, and I ran down the trail, and found the original still alive smiling at me. Trees are just animals that stay in one place.
3-14-89
I bought a lettuce today wrapped in plastic in a green cardboard tray. It joins a long list of kiwi fruit, cactus pads, and strange Mexican vegetables I probably will never eat, but always buy anyway.
The lettuce just looked at me all green and Spring like, and a little sad wrapped up - it reminded me of the original kiwi fruit too much to leave in the store.
I was in a train station in Scotland. It was cold and the color of old smoke from the burnt coal smoke never washed off the walls.
I saw a girl in a beret, and skipped two heart beats. For a quarter of a second it was Pam waiting for me in a haze of coal smoke, but trains haven't burnt coal in thirty years, and it was someone else.
The Cardinal embarrassed me with his pompous robes; he looked like someone escaped from a Monte Python skit. I didn't belong in Boston; it was scary, dark, and foreign.
I had to go to the bathroom. It seemed obvious that even Cardinals had to pee, so I asked at the cathedral where the News sent me, and was told I had to use the high school across the street. Ill bet the Cardinal with his entourage of obsequious priests urinate in the high school as well so I ambled over and down the stairs. Before the " gentleman's room " a gray blur appeared through a small window leading to the cafeteria. A cat thought I but it was a pleasant gray rat instead nibbling tid bits off the floor.
A rock on the table has wonderful glistening things in it. A scientist might say it was gneiss, and the shiny bits are mica, a poet drops of water in the Spring Sun. To me it's eternal: the rock, something that lasts forever, and the sparkles are its mystery.
I liked the last quiet place best. It was a surprise.
Sometimes one flower is more beautiful than a mountain full of trees.
A purple balloon followed me to Newtonville. It was alone in the street. Some drivers swerved around it. Some aimed for it, but it always blew away to safety.
I ran over and grabbed it from in front of a yellow cab. Its in a plastic bag now and safe from cars running it over.
I feel like that balloon lately; just barely safe in a world of large hungry cars. Newtonville is still a stupid place to be and the News a trivial one.
I might climb a mountain this Sunday; even if no one else comes.
I kept the purple balloon that I rescued from the wind, and a piece of Styrofoam, from Newtonville.
Old things, nice things, even if they are new.
Oscar the cat is chasing me all over the house - rubbing against me and purring quite loudly. She prefers to lie down at a certain "social distance", about two and a half feet. Pulsar just walked in with tail vertical in the "greeting"' in cat language sign. She and Oscar started licking each others faces: Oscar at first pummeled Pulsar than a few face licks than two loud purrers. Sirius is behind my head on the sofa, and Stump is elsewhere. Four cats; sometimes I wish they were all in comas or at least had encephalitis so they would just purr and provide soft heads to pat. Sometimes they are really wild animals, unlike dogs who grovel there inferiority, and want nothing beyond mindlessly pleasing there masters. Cats have no masters. It makes me mad sometimes when they are over the edge wild, but I still like and trust them implicitly. My cats are gentle, don't claw or bite unmercifully and provide good dependable if moody company. At least they never deceive. Three of them are asleep in attitudes of absolute trust, the forth a bit jumpy of late is elsewhere.
A girl came into the camera store, and asked about cameras in a very vague way." What about that one? " I like this one," etc. She picked out an " old fashioned " Minolta; was satisfied with the one lens left over that fit it, and left the store happy. She liked the camera she picked, and that was that!
Most Newton people spend weeks reading Consumer reports: making lists, taking notes, and then going home unsatisfied anyway.
The girl came behind the counter picked out what she liked, and went home happy.
Rob asked if I could give him a ride into Boston: he said he would buy the tickets for Ghettysburg for the ride. I cleaned enough of the truck out so he could actually sit in it.
We delivered a projector to Paddy Burkes; the Irish bar he frequents when I noticed a feather on the floor. It was a black crow feather that lived in my truck. It must have clung to his coat and fell on the floor, on a faded Guinness stained rug, in a republican pub in Boston. I picked it up and took it home. I noticed it as if it were a flashlight left on: it was an obvious thing, as out of place as I was.
The cat in the hall was yowling on the stairs above my head. It has the same approach avoidance waver that Pulsar has.
I opened the door, and Sirius bounded out, and didn't see the other cat. I let it look around, but protected Sirius from the sight
They missed each other: a good thing probably; teeth and claws and rent fur avoided by one cat who didn't look up, and another who didn't look down.
Sylvester pestered the table as usual; the little television table on the floor, and about 18 inches high. I thought he wanted fish scraps like a real cat, like Sirius, but he stood on his hind legs, and ate a jelly roll instead.
Somehow I drove to a perfect place; an abandoned quarry in the Sawatch mountains. I watched intense blue birds eating red berries, and felt the yellow light glow through the aspen leaves. The wind howled, and brought back all the reasons the West needs to be.
9-16-87
Pine Cone brand tomatoes in a can," everyone likes it ", announces the recipe for sloppy Joe's on the label. I certainly do.
I just saw an ad for Pine Cone tomatoes, and remember buying a few cans at White Hen pantry, and being very gastronomically satisfied.
Vacation next week with no real plan, and no one to go with. Jimmy Hargrove was going climbing with me, but trashed his knee, and instead faces a surgeon. I told him I would use a crow bar, and rip his knee cap off. The last time; he whimped out of a climbing expedition just because a hurricane dumped 19 trees on his house I went to England with Debby.
Money is a problem this time; though England isn't that far away really, maybe.
Left eyeball hurts in classic ( for me ) migraine pain; but not too bad this time. Probably sad about vacation and no place to go, no one to go with me, and no money. This is quite depressing actually. At least I have my cats; though of late I have wanted to skin them alive, I still love them.
The sadnesses today: just really sad, I keep looking at my mailbox and finding it empty.
Last night I went to Prime Computer to pick up a roll of film; something not done since I moved three months ago.
I was met by a smiling face which said," haven't seen you for awhile". The face is of an old man who has suffered eight operations and is ready for his ninth. The watchman asked," where have you been ", and I told him I had moved never thinking he would remember who I was with such severe troubles of his own. He had cancer on his face. When I last saw him one eye was swollen shut and bandages were all over his face and head. He told me he might lose the eye. I told him I moved and he asked about my cats. He remembered all the trouble I had about being evicted and refusing to give them up. He said," when you live with them so long they are a part of the family ". He also said I was a nice man to care that much about them.
He is an awfully nice man to remember the troubles of a visitor who did little more than drop off pictures and pick up film when he had cancer.
He looks pretty good now. The cancer was into his brain and around his eye and it's gone now. The ninth operation is simply to put his face back in order. His eye was saved.
I hope his grandchildren appreciate what they have. He has a good face; the scars only improve upon it.
Sonja Kalckar comes to mind; she called me for a date because her mother asked her to, and we went often to Haight Ashbury East, to Harvard square. We slid on the ice sidewalks, climbed trees in Harvard yard, and looked in a store that sold bowls she liked. When I stepped in front of a window full of magnifying glasses she kept on walking, her meager brain humming a tune of Bobby Dillons and forgetting my name.
I just saw the biggest insect I have ever seen outside of captivity. A boring night at Lechmere found me buying bread, and milk at a little store on whose parking lot loped a creature big enough to rope.
I dumped the bread, milk, and Nine Lives super supper on the ground, and scooped said creature up in the bag. It was an honest two inches long which is immense for an insect, and every step inside the bag could be heard. Looking at it by Toyota headlight I at first thought it was a cockroach, but the head and mouth parts didn't match the brown color. The wings folded into a classic X, and the piercing and sucking mouth was looked on in horror as it was close to a half inch long. The wings, and mouth were classic " bug " i.e. homoptera. It was a giant water bug; the only one I ever saw outside of a book. I drove to a dirt pile and let it go on the far side next to some bushes. The thought that that insect immensity can fly was disarming as was the fact that a bite from it would be unpleasant.
It was like seeing a lion. I am positively thrilled; the biggest insect I ever saw roaming free.
I also felt like me; which is that I like exploring, it makes me happy.
What a creature.
Pam Alexander: I drove to her new house in Natick, and we played in the snow. She tried to push me into a snow drift for fun, and I remembered a judo move, and threw her into the air. She said " I only saw that in the movies", then threw a big snow ball on my head. Of course we spent the next hour trying to throw each other in the snow: we played wipers, and boxing, and when I drove home there were tears in her eyes, and in mine. A blind person could see we loved each other, and always had.
Swiss trains, Steam trains.
A show on channel two
Reminds me of the steam train at Whollom Park, and Karen.
We took a train to the circus, and a train in the park.
We laughed till two in the morning.
She was Norwegian, and loved origami.
And to run: and she ran away.
Oscar is digging in the garbage. No matter what food is left out she searches for more; happily licking some slime out of a can. She is more a jackal than a cat.
I just called her a bacteria to no avail: insults won't help. I went over, and tied the garbage bag shut to keep her from suffocating in an orgy of yesterdays food.
Back at Newtonville camera in the cellar listening to the obnoxious motors fans and buzzers droning on forever in this little room.
The best thing so far today is the discovery of a large chocolate chip cookie crumb on the floor. The crumb is submerged in a brown mass of ants who trail out three feet to the wall. They are bearers in a 19th century safari carrying off chunks of flesh from there elephantine carcass. Ants are the masters of the Earth: relentless, always there in the end, for a cookie or a corpse. I will leave them there sweet feast. By tomorrow the cookie will be gone; if only they would eat Newton next.
Looking at a muskrat swimming in a turtle pond. I am " still hunting ", staying in one place looking.
An 83 year old lady rather formally dressed for an Audubon sanctuary stopped her brisk walk long enough to point out the albino duck she has watched for the past few years.
She told me her age ; then dressed for dinner save her conservative black sneakers, almost ran on down the trail. Her accent was from the deep South though she lived up North ( and what could be more Yankee than Concord Mass. ) She hung onto her accent with a pleasant pride; a magnolia on a cold early Spring day.
The albino duck was her lucky fish.